Matthew Norman reviews Daylesford Organic in Gloucestershire.

If Daylesford Organic Farm did not exist, the Guild of Satirists would have mandated its most destructive member to invent it.

Anyone who has come to know Daylesford over the years – from Liz Hurley tweeting about organic porridge with manuka honey to Kate Moss buying a cashmere tea cosy, or whatever – may have sworn to give it the sort of wide berth usually reserved for glowing lumps of weapons-grade plutonium. Although technically a working farm with restaurant, shops, spa and cottages attached, it is as a vignette of fin-de-siècle, boom-times self-indulgence and Chipping Norton narcissism that this Notting Hill enclave in the Cotswolds lives vibrantly in the mind.

In the quest to understand Cameron Conservatism a little better, an Eastertide visit was made – and what a wondrous paradox was revealed. Driving from Oxford, I passed signposts to Witney, then motored through Chipping Norton itself. It somehow came as no surprise to learn that Daylesford is owned and run by Carole Bamford who, with husband Sir Anthony (the JCB man), belonged to the disbanded Downing Street Kitchie-Sups Klub for premier league Tory donors.

Daylesford itself doesn’t look, sound or smell anything like a farm (unless of course Jo Malone is trialling Eau de Silage on the quiet). Every vestige of rural earthiness has been removed. It’s urbs in rure rather than rus in urbe: a mirror image of those black Range Rovers in town, pebbledashed with spray-on mud from a garden squirter for that fake bucolic veneer.

In the prissified barn which houses food store and restaurant, the brick walls are painted gleaming white, the furniture is smart blond wood and the nature of livestock farming itself is sanitised. A photo of “Our favourite ram Donald” hangs on a wall without apparent ironic intent, despite the presence on the (Soil Association-approved) menu of a lamb bap. Anyone obliged to explain that juxtaposition to a baffled six-year-old is hereby advised to borrow the mantra “He’s so cute, I could eat him!” from the cheek-pinching Jewish granny.

“I am finding this very creepy,” said one of us as we took it all in. “It’s really reminding me of Westworld.” She was referring to the 1973 Yul Brynner sci-fi movie in which the robot staff of a futuristic amusement park run horrifically amok.

“I’m thinking of The Prisoner,” chipped in another, “I was terrified the giant bubble would come after me for asking for a Diet Coke” (not organic, so not stocked). “I’m getting The Stepford Wives,” added a third when Lady B herself appeared to clear plates. Here’s a novelty, I murmured, being waited on by a billionairess. “Oh, don’t worry, she used to be doors-to-manual,” said the most stiletto-tongued among us (this Carole, like the namesake who bore the Duchess of Cambridge, was an airline stewardess). “She should know what she’s doing.”

The best to be said of the food is that it beautifully reflected its environment. It too was bewilderingly anodyne. Eggs royale (poached, and served with smoked salmon and hollandaise) was fine, while more adequate smoked salmon came in the Russian style with chopped egg, onion and capers. But cold roast beef, though properly rare, had fallen victim to a daring night raid by the Bovine Flavour Liberation Front, which had invaded the kitchen and removed every scintilla of taste with a syringe.

Wood-roasted salmon with sea kale was as bland as the lamb bap for which Donald or a colleague had paid the ultimate sacrifice in vain, and my chicken and apricot curry had half the kick of the arthritic mule known to his mates as Limpalong Leonard. Bizarrely, the most opinionated dish was the wild rice with pistachios and dried apricots, which the menu proudly heralds as suitable for anyone undergoing a detox.

“You do realise none of these people are locals,” said a Cotswold-dweller. “They waste three gallons driving from London thinking they’re off to the country, and then they stand around saying, 'Good grief, Marjorie, have you seen the price of these tomatoes?’.”

Artisan cheeses were good, as was a “forced rhubarb” and apple crumble, though the coercion seemed off-message. You’d have thought compassionate Conservatives abhor water-boarding the fruit and veg. Ice creams were also good, and both service and coffee excellent, but nothing could dispel the odd, anaesthetic fug.

We paid up and took a spin through the various adjacent shops, somehow resisting the temptation to pay £7.29 for a 1kg bag of Organic Chicken and Vegetable Bake for Dogs. It had been a peculiarly unnerving outing. Yet after giving the ancient, filthy little Audi a sound thrashing for embarrassing me in the 4x4 showroom that moonlights as a car park, I drove off buoyed with fresh hope for the Daylesford project. The minute energy science works out how to convert decadence thinly disguised as worthiness and thermonuclear smugness into electricity, this billionaire’s folly won’t merely start to turn an astounding profit. Overnight, it will make every power plant in the hemisphere obsolete.